fooling around/check in

Yesterday was Friendship Quilter's guild day.  Jane drove and we had 5 of us from the north end of the county make the trip.  Aline had a quilt to pick up from a member who long arm quilts.  Several of us are doing the row quilt.  I got to be there to take minutes though I did not get the memo about there being a board meeting prior to the meeting but someone filled in for me on that score.

Since I had not heard from the sewing machine guy or his wife about my machine, I figured he was just going to deliver them BACK to the meeting place.  I was right.   A couple of gears needed to be replaced that control the feed dogs.  He said that another set of gears in there looked "brand new" so it is possible that Lois' mom had had that work done on it.   Also a situation with the zig zag needed adjustment too.  For 45 bucks I am up and running and the cams will work now.  Woohoo!

We went out for a quick bite to eat before we came home.  One of the guild members and her little guest came in after we did and asked if they could join us. Caitlyn is 11 and her aunt lives next to Carole.  She must have expressed an interest in learning to sew and the aunt said, "I know someone who might be able to help you".  The young girl got a brand new Brother for Christmas and showed a cute pillow she had made at guild.  Carole said they are working on a table runner and another project now.  Even cooler?   She will be coming to the next sew-in on the Saturday date later in the month.  Caitlyn will be joined by two granddaughters of guild members who are about the same age.  The long arm quilter's granddaughter (Mallory) is already an honorary member and the other girl, Brooklyn has been helping her nana at the raffle table the last two months.  I think the girls will have a wonderful time together!  The program gal was going to come up with something special for the girls to work on.  Gotta keep quilting going, right???

We made one other stop at the Pink's Variety Store before we left.  I have never known if it is called that because it is their family name or the fact that the building is painted a Pepto Bismol pink.  One may have influenced the other---who knows??  Anyway, it is a hardware and other good stuff/junk store.  My door stop that sometimes shows up in quilt pictures in my living room came from there.  I found these scoop measures with built in measuring spoons at the end there along with a whisk that won't mar the finish of my new bargain pans that I told you about back in December.  (25 bucks for a full set when the neighbor probably sold me her Christmas present but original cost 200 list)  Aline didn't find the drawer pulls she hoped to find but DJ and I found ours there in the past---bathroom and kitchen.

Once I got home, DJ and I took off for one of the grocery errands.  With the lifting and bending restrictions he is not off the hook yet for some of that.   I needed him to lug the sewing machine in from the car as well and put the one that was in place elsewhere as I knew I wanted to "play" today, testing out the repairs.

First review the book.  Lois' mom had lots of notes along side the fashion and flexi stitch cams.  When I had tried to do this before I had gotten myself a bit confused about what was what  but I think I finally had something click.

The black ones are fashion discs and actually there are two more with the machine parts that may have come from another machine as they are not mentioned in the manual.  They control the side to side movement of the needle.  The white  "flexi-stitch" cams  are equipped with 4 different stitches depending on where you set the pattern selectors---and guess what I missed before?  Color coded with another dial.   (You have to sew with something in the space whether you actually use it or not. )  The flexi-stitch ones control side to side movement of the needles along with the back and forth movement of the feed.  You can see why my last attempts to use them came to naught with feed gears blown out.


Some of stitching attempts were a little more successfully undertaken than others.  Mostly I would need to adjust the stitch length or stitch width a hair more though I did produce a decent enough blind hem and feather stitch.  Those two really are the ones I was most interested in anyway.

Next I thought I would try quilting and try to remember which of the two walking feet in the Singer-Kenmore accessories container I had tried before.  One has a guide and one does not.  One maybe goes in with my Jem but which one?  The other is a generic one I got years ago hoping it might work with my Viking but I am still using the original one though it squeaks and looks just a hair whackerjawed.   Both seemed to work--would quilt though I think I had more clearance under the foot with one more than the other.

I moved on to trying a couple types of thread including a monofilament that I normally use for the pro-bono quilts.  Remember, I usually stitch in the ditch, I don't free motion and I don't want to see the thread, least you think I shouldn't use it or it wouldn't be YOUR first choice.  Anyway, I thought some of the YLI machine quilting thread called "Rio de Janerio" that one of the Belles gave me when she moved might work on my blog hop project so I gave it a trial run.  I also tried it with just a plain milk chocolate thread.  I gotta say I like the bright variegated thread better.  Some places it is bold, like the fabric and other spots, more subtle.


You might be able to see the two choices a little bit better in this other photo.

Just as a tip:  I always keep a little quilt sandwich by the machine when I am quilting to re-test my tension and get the bobbin thread pulled to the top when I put a new one in.  I guess I just made me a new one to play with.

Well, it looks like I made some decisions about how to proceed my sewing machine cover for the blog hop but I'm done sewing for the day.  Plenty of time to work on it tomorrow as I have few errands to run or home tasks to tend to.  It would be nice to be able to work on the binding part at Bama Belles on Tuesday.  I finished up hat #32 last night and want to try out a new pattern for the next one that I found HERE on "knitting on the net".   " Downton Abbey"  will be on soon and knitting will be just the ticket!

I hope you have had a good weekend, perhaps in spite of the weather patterns around the lower 48??  I saw somebody on Facebook griping about the weather down here and saying they wanted to "kill that lying ground hog"  while another stated it was all a Democratic plot.  Say what???  That almost got a snarky reply from me but I decided you cannot reason with idiots.  He would not be interested in my version of the truth anyway.  He could have just thought he was being funny or ironic anyway.  (He failed, miserably)

till next time---------